


The Plurality of Worlds

by MalevolentReverie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe, Bebe by Darla Phelps, Blood, Eventual Smut, F/M, Heavy Angst, Kidnapping, Monsterfucking, Nonverbal Communication, Pet Rey, Science Fiction, Scientist Ben, Size Kink, Stockholm Syndrome, Violence, Weird Fluff, based on a book, cabin fever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2020-08-14 06:17:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20187673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalevolentReverie/pseuds/MalevolentReverie
Summary: Ben is a researcher on a preserve where he often finds the dead human pets his kind abandon. But one day he finds a brainwashed woman alive, and his morality and self-control are challenged in the winter isolation.DISCONTINUED





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Множественность миров](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203966) by [Tersie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tersie/pseuds/Tersie)

> someone asked for this and i'm weak
> 
> so it's like TFK with a different plot, but the same elements of lizard people. this is based on bebe by darla phelps, which is still unsettling but different from pets! less daddy kink, more "i really don't want to fuck my pet" lolol
> 
> i think the name of this is pets 3: bebe’s story. it’s different from the story w/bach and pani so pls don’t spoil it for anyone here. if u haven’t read it, you’ll spoil this story if u do, but it’s up to you! 
> 
> they’re pretty good books and bebe’s story is way less involved in the punishment aspect. u can find the books on kindle!!! pls support the writer who came up with the idea

Winter should be particularly brutal this year, but Ben is well-prepared.

He made sure this year: he brought extra meal packs, extra bullets, and a new type of tranquilizer to try on the pack of wild humans he’s going to be studying. He won’t spend a month curled in the corner of his cabin with a flimsy blanket, considering killing the humans outside and eating them raw.

No, he’s a civilized being, and he’s prepared. His contingency plans have contingency plans—which, they usually do, but his own hubris got the best of him last year. The wilderness where abandoned pets live isn’t a joke, and even in a reinforced cabin, it’s a hellish place to live. Between avoiding the wolves that stand six feet tall at the shoulder and the snow drifts ten feet deep, Ben knows better than to underestimate the climate.

Ben sits at his desk in the small cabin: one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen that doubles as an office. He spins slowly in his chair, clicking a pen, watching the drifts of eerie green snow drift silently past the window. Reinforced window. Self-repairing glass.

The humans already did their rounds for the night, prodding at the windows with their spears to test the glass, as if Ben has something to hide in the cabin. They can’t be faulted for being so simple. They should be returned to their home planet where they belong, not kept in a national preserve to be studied.

He’s otherwise alone. His notes are typed and submitted to Central, soft click of buttons the only sound in the dark quiet, and he’s hand written his own notes in regards to the humans. Second copies are always useful—when the government sometimes ‘misplaces’ data they don’t agree with. Last year they ‘lost’ a fifteen page paper on illness in the wild pack of human men.

Some human illness, weak as they are. Black boils on their skin. Ben wore a respirator from then on during his perimeter checks searching for dumped pets or their dead bodies. He repaired broken fence and was keenly aware of the human men watching him from afar, struggling to contain their coughs.

One body that evening: a female, roughly ten human years. Microchip torn from her nape to prevent the owners from being found and prosecuted—very thin, fragile little thing. Ben dislikes finding dead pets and burying them while the wild pack hovers in the tree line. It’s not _his _fault. Owning a human is too expensive and time-consuming and they’re always ill with something.

Ben spins in his chair. He has some lewd magazines with him but it feels like a violation to masturbate on taxpayer money. Then again, he’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s snowing, and there’s a pack of abandoned pets waiting to stick a spear through his throat.

“And the meal packs,” he mutters. He turns again and closes his eyes. “The fucking meal packs are the worst part.”

Maybe he’s too old to be spending half his time studying humans, fascinating as they are. His mother wants him to settle down, and at twenty-eight, he’s nearly past his prime. But he’s never been much of a charmer like his father; certainly not enough to keep a gek’kata from wandering off when she gets bored. Women are as much of a bother as humans.

Bored, Ben decides to run a perimeter check. The humans are in hiding by now to avoid the massive wolves roaming the interior so he won’t have anyone to bother him. He dresses in his thick orange coat, dons boots and gloves to insulate his scales from the cold, and lazily tucks his tail in the back of his pants. He should get an insulator. Too lazy.

He slings a semi-automatic rifle across his back and steps out into the darkness. Glittering red eyes watch from the trees. Wolves.

“You, I can shoot,” he calls, locking the door. “You’re not federally protected.” He turns the gun and cocks it, and the wolves draw back. “Yeah—see? Go hunt something more your size.”

They don’t bother him much. He bares his own fangs as he walks off the porch and heads for the fence to scout for abandoned pets or damaged fencing. He’s never found a live pet. They all succumb to the cold or the wolves before he finds them. Not that it bothers him. They’re just humans.

His boots crunch through the green snow and he keeps a firm grip on his rifle. Eight feet is too much gek’koto for a wolf to kill. They’ll go for little kids, though. Most gek’kota can kill a wolf with their bare hands if push comes to shove—but the wolves know better by now and stay in the preserve.

There are bigger predators on the planet. There’s always a bigger predator.

Ben illuminates the black fence and finds a torn chunk sloppily patched by someone shoving their pet through. He growls and digs in his pocket for a soldering iron to fix it before something gets in or out. There’s shelters to dump humans at if you get sick of them. Throwing them out in the wilderness on a planet they don’t understand is highly illegal because it’s so fucking cruel.

He crouches, scowling. “Everyone and their fucking brother wants a human until the vet bills come in. They’ve got respiratory systems like spiders; too simple for the air here. But everybody’s gotta have a human, because they’re _so cute_—” Ben yanks the fence into place and flicks on the torch. “Then they bite and piss and shit everywhere, and—”

Over the hiss of the iron, he hears a plaintive wail.

It’s such a foreign sound to hear life that Ben freezes for a minute. He waits, then hears a wail again that sounds like… Rey?

It’s a gek’kota word: baby, dear. Humans can’t usually speak the language because of the harsh growls and snarls involved but—

“…_Rey_?”

Ben jumps to his feet, iron be damned. His heart pounds as he follows the sound and the unmistakable metallic smell of human blood. There’s a trail of it in the green snow, red and angry, lined by small hand and footprints from a delirious human wandering into the woods.

“Shit, shit.” He fumbles for his radio to report a live pet but it’s back at the cabin. “Double _shit_.”

She’ll be scared out of her fucking mind when she sees him running up to her, but probably not half as scared as she’ll be when the hungry pack of wolves finds her. They love human meat, what without the scales to protect them. Easy to chew, tiny bones they can snap.

The wail turns into screaming and Ben swears again. He pulls the rifle to his front as the bobbing flashlight spills across two particularly large wolves circling a small bundle of human in the snow. Don’t move _toward_ the trees; that’s where the fucking wolves are that want to eat you.

He fires a warning shot into the air first but neither wolf wants to give up an easy dinner. One howls and shows off a big mouth full of dripping yellow fangs and instinctively, Ben does the same thing, snarling and baring his own fangs. Fuck the gun. He’s pent-up and bored and ready to kill a wolf. Grab ‘em by the upper jaw and shove back until it cracks. Dead wolf.

One goes after the human, snatching a long thin leg in his jaw, and Ben hesitates for a second before shooting it in the head. She’s screaming like a banshee and the second wolf isn’t happy his friend is dead, so he leaps on Ben before he can turn and shoot him in the face, too.

They fall back in the snow, snapping and snarling. The cold bites into Ben’s tail and almost instantly makes him sluggish and weak—he struggles to seize the top half of the snout and has to push all his weight into bending it back. But the wolf yelps in pain and flips over, and Ben has to roll with it to keep his grip, and it smells like rot and desperation. He feels bad.

He hisses and kicks it off him. “Fuck off! I know you’re hungry you dumb—fuck! Get out of here or I’ll shoot you, too!”

It scrambles in the fresh snow, limping to its long, powerful legs, then takes off into the forest, already howling for backup.

Ben rushes to the human and—yeah, she’s bleeding, from her neck where they ripped out the microchip and her leg where the wolf bit her. She’s drooling, head lolling when he picks her up out of the snow, and it looks like she has some frostbite on her toes and fingertips. She might be dead by morning.

“Ate some pretty gold berries?” he pants, shifting her in his arms. She’s _light_. How long has she been here? “Shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know if I have antidote or not, and it’s only for gek’kota. Beats bleeding to death in the middle of the woods, though, huh?”

She keeps mumbling the same word over and over, _Rey_, maybe the name her owners gave her before throwing her out. Ben hurries back to the cabin, because he can kill one wolf, but he can’t kill six of them at once.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN

Humans bleed a _lot_; they bleed a lot more than what Ben remembers learning in class. It’s been a couple years since then and he wishes he paid closer attention so he’d know what to do with Rey and the torrent of dark blood running down her pale leg.

She’s almost naked, only wearing a thin pink dress that’s torn down the side, and underwear with a duck on the front. Ben strides to the bathroom for the first aid kit and bitters that should help reverse the poison. Poor thing. She was probably hungry and ate the only thing she could find.

“You’ve probably been an inside pet,” Ben muses out loud. He peers into the bedroom and sees she’s lying there, convulsing silently, but she whimpers. “I’ll go see if the microchip is lying around by the fence—maybe they dropped it after they ripped it out.”

It’s sad. Humans can’t withstand the frigid temperatures any better than gek’kota can, though Rey seems to have become frost bitten rather quickly. Her microchip wound _seemed _fresh.

Ben takes to the torn leg first. It’s a lot of damage—wolves have thick teeth—but humans heal remarkably fast. He kneels and cleans the wounds with a warm cloth, sprays them with antibiotic, and binds her calf as tight as he can. Rey writhes, listless. Her blue lips part and she gasps, hazel eyes rolling back. They do that before they die. Death rattle.

He pushes the cap off the antidote, designed for a three hundred pound gek’koto and not a hundred-something pound human. Ben hesitates. It might be more humane to keep her warm and let her die.

But he’s a sucker as far as gek’koto go. He plunges the needle into her outer thigh and her eyes pop open in shock, but she only moans and goes limp. Half the dose should be okay, maybe. Accidentally ODing a wild pet isn’t a felony or anything.

“Going to take a couple tries,” Ben says. He bandages the entrance wound from the needle and sets it aside. “I have bitters that should help but we’ll try that when you’re not foaming at the mouth.”

Rey shivers, which is a good sign. Endothermic animals should do that. Her dress is a lost cause and probably making her colder so Ben casually tears it off with a hard pull from his claws. There’s nowhere else to put her so his bed will have to be sacrificed. At least her blood is easy to clean off the floor.

He wraps her in a few blankets and under the comforter and flicks on the overhead heat lamp meant for emergencies. It bathes her in red light—just her round face, the only part of her he can still see. She’s an older human, maybe in her third decade of life, but he can’t be sure.

Ben leaves her, satisfied with what he’s done. She may be around when he wakes up in the morning.

• • •

Rey is still around.

Ben wakes up on the couch to find her crying and wandering around the front door like she’s going to open it. She can’t reach the deadbolt so it doesn’t matter but he doesn’t want her letting in any of the wild males. Humans don’t have a heat cycle in winter, do they? Are they cyclical?

He yawns and sits up, rubbing his face. “What? Miss your people?” Ben stands and she shrinks back. “They don’t miss you. Go back to bed.”

Rey cries more and stumbles back into the kitchen table. Her leg is bleeding like hell again, so Ben growls and fetches the first aid kit to fix it. Pain in the ass.

She’s vomited once or twice in the bedroom, thankfully off the edge of the bed. He cleans it up before going to find her in the front room, where she’s pushing a chair in front of the door like she wants to get out.

It’s easier to see now in the dawn: Rey has a long, ugly scar across her stomach, the only sign anyone’s been abusing her. It’s not legally abuse, anyway, though rearranging organs for the express purpose of fucking an animal does _seem _like abuse.

Ben collects himself. He twists the chair away and ignores her when she melts down and wails, sinking to the floor the way humans do. They learn to throw a hissy for when they don’t get their way, and it’s encouraged because again, it’s ‘cute.’ Doesn’t seem cute. It’s a little stupid and rude considering he almost got killed saving her.

“You’re bleeding everywhere!” he snaps. “Sit!”

She’s stumbling around naked, hugging herself and backing away from Ben as he approaches. Don’t flatter yourself. Gek’kata only. Even if it’s been a while since then.

He grabs her skinny arm and she screeches again. Human claws are too thin to cause any damage so it’s easy enough to drag her to the bathroom.

Rey keeps kicking and screaming even after he licks the door. Might as well wash off the sweat and whatever else before changing the bandage. It’ll be good to rinse the bite out as well.

“No one’s coming out here to get you, so we’re stuck together unless you keel over.” Ben starts a shower and frowns at her tangled mane. “Better brush that out, I guess, even through you’re ungrateful.”

She jerks away when he touches her head, crying so hard her face is red. What’s _wrong _with her? If the scar on her stomach is any indication, she’s used to being touched by gek’koto.

Nauseating. Ben shudders and turns for his hairbrush and when he turns back, she’s silent and deathly pale, staring at it with wide eyes.

He blinks. “Oh—sorry. Not for hitting.” He combs it through his black hair to show her, then tries to gently stroke through hers. “See? I’m not going to spank you or anything. Unless you bite me. Then the gloves are off.”

She still doesn’t move. He takes the opportunity to brush out her mane himself, so he knows it’s done correctly, and tests the temperature of the water when he’s through. Rey doesn’t move until the brush is back in the drawer and out of sight.

Ben gestures. “Up. In. Shower.”

Her small hands wring in front of her. She stares at him as she reaches back to touch the water.

“Clean?” she asks.

Oh good. At least she knows some of the language.

Ben nods, amused by her accent. “Yes. Clean.”

His gaze wanders down her body, tan and covered in more spots like the ones on her face. There’s a tuft of hair between her thighs that’s foreign and he knows he shouldn’t be staring at. He lifts his eyes back to her face and clears his throat.

“Clean,” he repeats.

Rey steps in the shower, peering at him from behind the curtain. She looks like she’s waiting for him so Ben sits on the toilet and clasps his hands to send the message that they’re _not _showering together.

Her sniffles die down. She closes the curtain and he hears the sounds of her scrubbing her hair, then she yanks the curtain back again. This time she offers a dripping loofa with the same confused look on her face. Didn’t she even _shower _by herself?

Ben rubs the bridge of his nose between two fingers before he gets up. Rey shrinks back after he takes the thing, making room like she’s waiting for him to join her. Which isn’t going to happen.

“Turn,” he says tiredly. He makes a motion with a claw. “Around.”

She does. He scrubs her back and shoulders, down over her hips and thighs, deliberately avoiding the space between them. She turns again to let her back rinse off while he blinks at the front, trying to figure out how to wash her without making it weird.

“Sir?” Rey asks, hopefully. “Ma’am?”

“What, your people? They’re not here.” Ben offers her the loofa, cringing. “You do it.”

Her face crumbles again. She cries and takes the loofa, sobbing softly while she cleans her breasts and flat belly and between her legs. It’s pitiful.

But the humans get very attached after a while, and abandoning them becomes increasingly difficult. Some die from their grief while they wait in a pound for another family to adopt them. Ben’s heard of some trying to end their own lives, though he figures humans don’t have high enough intelligence for that.

Rey finishes. She lets him clean the bite on her foreleg and keeps crying when the shower stops. The poor thing doesn’t understand she’s been abandoned.

Ben pats her dry, doing his best not to linger, and wraps a new bandage around her bite wound. He has to pin her to the floor for the injection of antitoxin and she wails about _that_, too. She especially hates the bitters he pushes through her blunt teeth.

But he’s satisfied when he’s done. She’s clean and medicated, and definitely not dead.

“Sir?” Rey repeats as they walk to the front room. She rubs her eyes, sniffling. “Ma’am?”

Ben rolls his eyes and ignores her. He opens his cabinet of dehydrated meal packs and tosses one on the counter, because he knows she needs to eat. While it slowly inflates in the bag he runs the tap for a cup of water and hands to down to her.

Rey takes it in both hands and shakes while she drinks. Some of it spills down her throat and between her breasts and Ben quickly rips his eyes away.

Jesus. He’s only been back on the preserve for a little bit and he’s already horny as hell.

He puts the meal on a plate and hands it down to her. Rey gives him another pathetic look but shuffles to the futon and eats anyway. Good. She doesn’t need to be a crybaby _and _a picky eater.

He doesn’t bother eating anything, opting instead to check his email for anything from Central. Rey watches him, eating with her paws instead of the fork and knife, sometimes taking staggered little breaths like she’s about to cry again. She hiccups.

“Sir? Ma’am?”

Ben doesn’t look away from his computer. “No.”

It goes quiet. He clicks around and opens a new file to record where and when he found her, and he’s half done when he feels a tug on his pants.

It’s her, watery hazel eyes and all, lower lip trembling. She tugs on his trousers again. She’s cute and she knows it—probably uses it to her advantage at home.

“Sir?” she repeats.

“I’m _Ben_. Not Sir.” He leans over for a tissue and wipes her paws clean, then her mouth. Her breasts, he leaves alone.

“…Ben?”

“Yes, Rey. Ben.”

She stares, then cries again.

“Baby?” Her paws roam higher on Ben’s thigh and he stiffens. “Ella? Baby?”

“What—_you _have a baby?” He jumps when her fingers brush too close for comfort, skimming the edge of his cock. “Jesus—I hope you’re not trying to demand a baby from me.”

But Rey slips away again and sits on the floor to cry. She covers her face with her hands and babbles about Sir and Ma’am and Ella, and Ben is suddenly not so sure what the scar on her belly is from. Humans usually give birth vaginally, but maybe her people bred her and kept the infant human.

Maybe. Maybe her people had their own baby and decided Rey was too much extra work.

Ben fetches one of his long sleeve shirts from the bedroom. He tugs it over Rey’s head and helps her arms in the sleeves, and he’s happy that it covers past her knees. He’ll try to wash the underwear but if it’s beyond cleaning she’ll have to make do without.

Humans are sensitive little things, and he’s certain Rey needs a nap. He carries her back to the bedroom with the blankets and heat lamp, and bundles her while she keeps calling out the names like one of them might hear her. Eventually she’ll figure out that they’re not coming back.

“I know,” Ben sighs. “I know. Some people really fucking suck, don’t they?”

She keeps sobbing until she falls asleep. He decides to keep the door open in case she needs him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rey flashback--she briefly has sex w/someone who isn't ben, but it's pretty impartial

Ma’am has been pregnant for a couple of months now, and Sir has been using Rey more often than usual. It’s okay. She’s happy to oblige.

She’s eye-level with Ma’am’s scaly round belly, bent over a chair, quiet while the two of them hiss and growl to one another. Sir keeps one clawed hand on Rey’s hip to keep her in place and cups Ma’am’s face with the other, kissing her.

But he’s pounding into Rey. She’s used to it now. She bends over and he has sex with her because Ma’am must not be able to anymore, and she sits in front so they can kiss and touch. Rey stays quiet like she was trained to and closes her eyes.

Sir digs his talons into her skin as he climaxes, groaning and thrusting in deeper. It spills inside her, warm and sticky, and Rey squirms from the tension in her lower belly. It’s easier since she had the surgery a couple years ago—now it doesn’t hurt.

He catches his breath. Ma’am murmurs and kisses him and reaches down to pet Rey’s hair. She smiles and nuzzles into her cool palm.

Sir slips free. “Good girl, Rey.”

Her muscles hurt, but she manages to climb back over the chair Sir always uses for their recreational time. Cum runs down her thighs in thick rivulets, glowing neon blue, and Ma’am points and laughs at it. She offers Rey her hand and leads her upstairs for a bath.

Sir rubs her belly before they walk by.

• • •

Rey puts away her recreation chair like she’s supposed to after Ma’am gives her a bath. She’s dressed again in a yellow dress and a fresh diaper, watching through the doorframe while Ma’am makes dinner and Sir reads a newspaper.

The baby will be here soon and she can’t wait. She’s already looked around the nursery and paws through the onesies in the dresser drawer, excited to see the new baby, Ella. She hopes she can hold her and maybe feed her, and watch her learn how to walk.

Ma’am gasps.

Rey turns and sees Sir catching Ma’am, who is grabbing at her stomach. The baby is coming!

She claps excitedly and races upstairs for the duffel bag Sir set aside a few weeks ago. He might forget it. She can help.

“Rey!”

He shoves her out of the way. Rey tumbles onto the carpet as Sir grabs the bag and rushes back out of the room without a second glance back.

Oh no. What if they leave her? She wants to come.

“Ah—Wait!” Rey bleats. She scrambles to her feet, hurrying down the hallway. “Wait!”

The front door opens and shuts downstairs.

Rey stops dead where she is. Something creeps over her that she hasn’t felt in a long time, like she’s being strangled; a sensation she’s learned to push down. She sniffles and her eyes burn. What if they don’t come back? What if she’s alone forever?

Obedient, she shuffles to her own nursery and crawls in her crib. They told her to go to her room when they leave the house, and she wouldn’t dream of running away. Sir and Ma’am are very good people, and mommy told her to obey them.

• • •

Rey tries keeping busy for the next couple days. She doesn’t eat because she isn’t allowed in the cabinets, so she drinks lots of water and picks out clothes for the baby. She folds and refolds and taps her fingers together anxiously. They’ll come back.

Once or twice she fetches the recreation chair just in case Sir wants it when he comes home. She puts it away both times and cleans her spanking hairbrush instead, scrubbing the back Ma’am uses to punish her when she’s bad.

It’s _her _responsibility to keep it clean and ready, and _her _responsibility to be good.

Rey bathes with toilet paper because she’s afraid to use the shower without help. She changes diapers but stays away from the toilet, because she’s not allowed to use it, and her fear keeps growing. Where are her people? Don’t they want her anymore?

Finally, on the fourth day, the front door opens again.

She races downstairs and beams when she sees Sir and Ma’am. They smile. There’s a bundle of pink in Ma’am’s arms and Rey can’t _wait _to see Ella.

She hops down the steps, clapping and mumbling, but Sir catches her upper arm. He frowns, eyeing her dirty hair and the dress she’s been wearing since they left. Rey isn’t allowed to change herself.

Sir sighs and drags her upstairs while Ma’am takes the new baby into the living room. Rey whimpers, looking over her shoulder. She wants to see the baby. It’s been months of waiting and everyone is so excited.

But she needs a bath. Sir starts one and helps her out of her clothes and diaper, and grasps her cheeks so she’ll open her mouth. He sighs again and brushes her teeth before the bath is ready. She tried to be good and not do anything she’s not supposed to.

Rey climbs in her bath but Ma’am calls and Sir leaves. She sits alone in the cold water and looks around, blinking. They usually do this part. Should she do this part? Will she get in trouble?

Instead of doing anything, Rey just sits there. And sits there. And sits there.

Her skin is pruny when the door opens again, and Ma’am comes inside with Ella. She gasps, even though Rey was good and stayed put, and calls for Sir.

“Ekka! _Ekka_!”

The baby whines. Rey leans up a bit, eager to see, but Sir comes in a moment later and snaps at her. She shrinks back into the cold water as he kneels and begins roughly washing her. Ma’am carries the baby out as she begins to cry.

Sir pulls Rey from the bath and dries her off. He puts her in clean clothes and snaps ‘bed.’

She hurries to her nursery without another word. Ma’am sings to Ella in the odd soft way gek’kata do, and Rey pauses near her door to listen. She can see the baby soon. She’s sure of it.

• • •

A few tense days pass.

Sir and Ma’am seem stressed. Ella cries often and they go back and forth carrying her and feeding her something green in a bottle.

Rey tries to stay out of the way, unless Sir visits her room and bends her over a chair. He comes without Ma’am but still just holds Rey’s hips and plunges in and out until she’s full. He scratches her hair when he’s done and sometimes leaves her without a bath.

Her people are stressed and that makes Rey stressed. She wants to fix it. How?

One night Ella cries and no one comes for a couple minutes. Rey perks up in her own crib, slowly standing, and beams. She can help.

She climbs over the rail and hops down to the floor, still sticky from Sir’s visit earlier. Her bare feet patter down the hall to Ella’s nursery and she peers inside. She still hasn’t met the baby.

It’s quiet, save for Ella’s whimpering. Rey tiptoes forward, wringing her hands, and steps on a chair so she can see over the railing.

Ella is pretty and small; about half Rey’s size. Her skin is mostly scales like Sir and Ma’am’s but she has the features of a human just like Rey. She’s very pretty. She has black hair just like Ma’am but Sir’s nose.

“REY!”

The shout is so loud that Rey falls off the chair. Ma’am grabs Ella and yells for Sir, and Rey knows she’s in big trouble.

“Get your brush!” Ma’am snaps, pointing at the door. “Ekka! EKKA!”

Rey scrambles from the nursery to the bathroom for her punishment brush. She climbs up the counter and when she has it and slips back down, she sees Sir in the doorway. He doesn’t look happy. He’s tired.

He points. “Bedroom.”

“Yes,” Rey mumbles. She skitters past him. “Sorry.”

Sir follows. Ella keeps crying as he closes the bedroom door and sits on the small couch Rey has specifically for being punished when she’s bad.

He beckons and she comes. Rey squeezes her eyes shut as Sir bends her over his knee and hikes up her dress. She was only trying to help. She only wanted to meet the new member of her family.

• • •

More tense days pass, and Rey sinks into a depression. She can’t do anything right.

Sir and Ma’am talk softly. Ella cries less. They look at Rey and Ma’am cries but Sir murmurs and shakes his head. It seems like they’re upset with her, too.

She plays with her puzzles in the living room and feels the terrible suffocating sensation in her chest. This is the only place where she won’t be a bother. Sir hasn’t even come for recreation because he’s so mad.

“Rey.”

She turns. They’re both in the doorway watching her, and Sir is holding her favorite backpack. Ma’am hangs behind his shoulder and covers her mouth and cries.

Sir motions and Rey jumps up. It looks like they’re going for a trip to the groomer or the pet store. She loves picking out treats and saying hi to the other pets, most of whom speak a language she doesn’t know. Humanspeak. English.

Ma’am leans down and gives Rey a great big hug. She smiles and hugs her back. Good, maybe they aren’t upset with her anymore. She’s trying her best.

Sir takes Rey’s hand. He leads her out the front door and she turns to wave goodbye to Ma’am. Maybe she’ll be allowed to hold Ella when she comes back.

They get into the car. Sir straps Rey into her car seat just a foot or two from Ella’s, and he kisses her temple. He pats her leg before he shuts the door—this could be a trip to the vet. Ugh.

“Trip?” Rey chirps when he gets in the front.

His green eyes meet hers in the rear view mirror. He’s quiet for a long minute before he nods.

“Trip.”

• • •

Snow lines the roads as they drive through the darkness out of town. Rey wriggles excitedly and taps her fingertips together. She can play in the snow with Ella—Ma’am bought Rey a very nice snowsuit for her last birthday and she’s enjoyed it very much.

Sir stays silent. He makes his turns and music plays softly from the radio. He’s always quiet.

They pull to the side of the road next to a great big fence. Rey frowns as Sir gets out and comes around to open her door. She’s never seen this place.

He pushes a pill in her mouth. “Swallow.”

She swallows.

Sir unbuckles her car seat and lifts her out under her armpits. Rey shivers from the cold, even though she’s bundled up in her thick clothes, and she chirps when Sir hands her the backpack. She slips it on—and blinks from a sudden strike of dizziness.

“We love you, Rey,” Sir says. He pets her head, leading her toward the fence. “Very much.”

“…Love you,” she slurs. Her steps falter. “Ella? Ella?”

“Shh. Shh.”

Sir tugs apart a hole in the fence. He gestures for Rey to go through and her jacket catches on the way, so he has to slip in free.

She stumbles into deeper snow. Something rattles behind her but when she turns, the car is gone, and she’s alone in the dark. And it’s cold. She doesn’t know where she is or where Sir is.

“Sir?” she calls feebly. Her small fingers grasp the fence but it won’t budge. “Sir? Sir?!”

Darkness settles in. Rey screams louder, shaking the fence and crying for the first time in years, getting more and more dizzy. Where is he?! Did he forget her?! She never meant to hurt Ella!

Disoriented, Rey stumbles from the fence out into the icy snow. She cries dejectedly and sheds her backpack and her clothes along the way, lost and confused, hot but cold, and sad. They’ll come back for her. This must be a place for her to play for a couple days.

She staggers into the dark forest. They’ll come back. Rey is good and her people love her.


End file.
